Between February 20 and 23, a group of BA and MA students in from the Humboldt University spent four inspiring days on an excursion to Rome and Florence studying the topic of museums, collections and museology in Italy between the 15th and the 21st centuries.
Professors Kathleen Christian and Eike Schmidt taught seminars on this topic in the Winter semester and then led the excursion to Italy with the invaluable support of Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin Dr. Margherita Tabanelli. The schedule was a demanding, but rewarding one. It began with a trip to Florence and a visit to the Uffizi and Pitti museums, where the group benefited from the expertise of former director Schmidt. On the next day, the group visited EUR and discussed with the director, Dr. Andrea Villani, his plans for rethinking and redesigning the Museo delle Civiltà. In the afternoon, students visited the Vatican Museums and took a guided tour of the Palazzo Farnese. The following day included a trip to the Villa Borghese and a discussion with the director Francesca Cappelletti, followed by time in the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. Finally, on Friday students were treated to a tour of the Palazzo Colonna, with a special greeting from Principe Prospero Colonna and museum director Patrizia Piergiovanni (pictured), followed by a visit to the Capitoline Museums.
Over the four days the students were able to obtain a sweeping overview of the history of collecting and display of art between the Renaissance and the present, reflecting on themes such as the transition from private collections to public museums, the history of antiquities collections, and the collecting and exhibition of non-European objects in Italy from the time of the Medici collections in the 16th century to the ‘ethnographic’ collections housed in EUR in the 20th century.